"I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work."
---THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

We're currently tweaking the system. For our first 18 years or so, the edit functions were extremely limited -- originally zero, in fact, eventually evolving into a brief window that closed when somebody replied to that post.

We recently experimented with an unlimited timeframe for editing posts, which led to considerable abuse. When we started getting complaints that threads were becoming difficult to follow because of the number of edits -- such as when posts quoted other posts that no longer contained those posts -- we realized that we'd gone too far.

Typical forum practice across the web is closer to our modified original policy: a brief window, 10-15 minutes, that closes when a post has been replied to. This is consistent behavior in forums in many areas of interest, some of which also don't allow editing at all, some of which require a user to publicly post the reason for editing their post, and some of which include a link to the original, unedited version of the post.

The ultimate goal is to find the balance between flexibility and stability. We'll keep working on it!

You should definitely be seeing an Edit button after you make a post. Can you try logging out and logging back in first, then make a test post in the Test Post forum forum to see if it's still missing.